Why should we recycle

The ever augmenting consumer needs translate into an equally huge number of manufacturing units and factories. The result — huge amounts of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, greater stress on the need of living space in urban centers, the malaise of waste dumping in the already brimming landfills, and not to forget the cumulative increase in the levels of pollution. There is no retracting possible on the population front, and consequently, the demands and hence the factories set up to cater to these demands; all are here to stay.

The most obvious question to arise out of such a situation is how can this development be sustained without any lasting ill impact on the environment? This can be done through recycling. Put into simple words, recycling is the process of converting used and exhausted items into a sort of raw material which can be processed and utilized to make the same product again, or even a different product. The best part about recycling is that the efforts and resources required to recycle a product into a new form are lesser than those required to create the product from scratch. Not only does this mean that the issues of dumping and mitigating the used product get resolved, it also implies that the drastic effects of pollution on the environment get absorbed in the process of recycling. Generally, the waste products of manufacturing processes are dumped into landfills.

However, these spaces are constantly approaching their usage limits. The result is that the some waste products head to the seas and oceans, thus resulting in an uncontrollable amount of degeneration in the quality of marine resources. If adopted worldwide, recycling can keep a stringent tab on such problems. The ideology of putting every ‘useless’ article into an alternate use can work wonders and help mankind emerge out of the bleak energy crisis. Recycling is not a choice anymore, considering the rate at which the natural resources are getting exhausted. Making judicious use and reuse of resources is a necessity and it is just a matter of time when recycling becomes the only alternative.